Inside the (weird) World of Catfishing on Facebook

http://go.cogdog.it/catfishbook
Alan Levine • February 10 2016 • Universidad del Sagrado Corazón

flickr photo by Mike Tewkesbury https://flickr.com/photos/7687126@N06/2854503391 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-ND) license

A foray into the realm of fake online personas using my photos to make accounts for the purpose of scamming victims out of money. Crazy? Yes. What is Facebook doing? Not much. What can you do? Plenty.





listen to audio recording 52 Mb mp3

Previously Presented

• Feb 10, 2015 for students at Universidad del Sagrado Corazón : slides listen to audio recording 22 Mb mp3

Web Sites Mentioned

• Catfish (2010 movie) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1584016/
• Who Coined the Term "Catfishing?" (Slate) http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/01/18/catfish_meaning_and_definition_term_for_online_hoaxes_has_a_surprisingly.html
• Identity, Love, and Catfishing (Alec Couros) http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/2393
• The Life of an Internet Catfish Is Rough These Days (Wired) http://www.wired.com/2015/07/catfish-2/
• Online Dating Made this Woman a Pawn in a Global Crime Plot http://www.wired.com/2015/10/online-dating-made-woman-pawn-global-crime-plot/
• 'Are You Real?' — Inside an Online Dating Scam (AARP) http://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/info-2015/online-dating-scam.html
• “Wired Love”: A tale of catfishing, OK Cupid, and sexting … from 1880 (Clive Thompson) http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2013/07/wired_love_a_ta.php
• How online scammers created a fake identity using little more than my picture (GeekWire) http://www.geekwire.com/2014/no-i-in-imposter/
• Blog posts about Catfishing (CogDogBlog) http://cogdogblog.com/tag/catfishing
• Photos Used in Fraudulent FB Profiles (Alan Levine, Facebook album) https://www.facebook.com/cogdog/media_set?set=a.174501702889430.1073741828.100009888034507&type=3&pnref=story
• Timothy Boostrom is Not Real: How Facebook provides a nurturing home for catfishing scammers (medium) https://medium.com/@cogdog/timothy-boostrom-is-not-real-28a2f57c37f4#.vasor8u55
• Facebook Community Standards https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards
• Facebook Help Pages (on accounts not allowed) https://www.facebook.com/help/167722253287296
• When identity thieves targeted beloved open course teachers, Facebook sided with the crooks (Boing Boing) http://boingboing.net/2015/11/12/when-identity-thieves-targeted.html
• How Does Facebook Suggest Tags? https://www.facebook.com/help/122175507864081
• Why Facebook's Facial Recognition is Creepy (PCWorld) http://www.pcworld.com/article/229742/Why_Facebooks_Facial_Recognition_is_Creepy.html
• Facebook’s facial recognition software doesn’t even need to see your face anymore (Technobuffalo) http://www.technobuffalo.com/2015/06/22/facebooks-facial-recognition-software-doesnt-even-need-to-see-your-face-anymore/
• How Romance Scammers Port Video Files Over Skype https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QdzG8l_OlQ
• Cybercrime Update: CatPhishing https://webpreserver.com/cybercrime-update-catphishing/
• Info For Romance Scam Victims (Alec Corous) http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/information-for-romance-scam-victims
• Victims of Catfishing (Facebook) https://www.facebook.com/victimsofcatfishing/
• Romance Scams http://www.romancescam.com/
• Scam Survivors http://www.scamsurvivors.com/
• Reverse Image Searching with Google https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/1325808?hl=en
• Tineye Reverse Image Search http://tineye.com
• FBI Internet Crime report cites over $80 million stolen in 2014 from Confidence / Romance scams and these are just the subset that involves using information from military personnel https://www.fbi.gov/news/news_blog/2014-ic3-annual-report (PDF)

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Mentions

• STEMmED Web site http://stemmed.sagrado.edu/blog/2016/02/10/1695/